Santiago de Compostela Cathedral and the Medieval Camino

Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is a great Romanesque church in north-western Spain, begun in 1075 over the tomb believed to hold St James the Apostle. Together with Rome and Jerusalem, it became one of the three leading pilgrimage destinations of medieval Christendom. The roads that led to it, known as the Camino de Santiago or Way of St James, drew pilgrims from across Europe and helped bind the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain to the rest of the continent.

Background: the tomb of St James

St James the Great, son of Zebedee, was one of Jesus’s twelve apostles and was executed in Jerusalem around AD 44. A later tradition held that he had preached in Spain, and that after his death his followers carried his body by boat to Galicia.

According to medieval accounts, a hermit named Pelayo saw lights over a field in the early ninth century, probably in the 820s or 830s. Bishop Theodemir of Iria Flavia identified a tomb there as that of the apostle. King Alfonso II of Asturias built a small church over it, and King Alfonso III replaced it with a larger one, consecrated in 899.

The shrine became a symbol for the Christian kingdoms of northern Iberia, which faced the powerful Muslim state of al-Andalus to the south. In 997 the Córdoban military leader al-Mansur (Almanzor) sacked Santiago. He reportedly spared the tomb but took the church’s bells to Córdoba, where they were used as lamps in the Great Mosque.

Building the Romanesque cathedral

The present cathedral was begun in 1075 under Bishop Diego Peláez, during the reign of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile. Its first architect is recorded as Master Bernard the Elder, assisted by a mason named Robert. Work slowed during political quarrels and then gathered pace under Diego Gelmírez, bishop from 1100 and archbishop from 1120, an ambitious churchman who did much to raise Santiago’s status.

The church followed the design of a “pilgrimage church”, a type also seen at Saint-Sernin in Toulouse and Sainte-Foy in Conques. It has a Latin-cross plan with a long nave and transept, upper galleries, and an ambulatory, a walkway around the apse lined with chapels. This arrangement allowed crowds of pilgrims to move around the church and reach the shrine without disrupting services.

The great western entrance, the Pórtico da Gloria, was carved by Master Mateo and his workshop. An inscription records that its lintels were set in place in 1188. Its sculpted apostles, prophets and elders of the Apocalypse, once brightly painted, are among the finest works of late Romanesque art. The cathedral was formally consecrated in 1211 in the presence of King Alfonso IX of León.

The medieval Camino

Pilgrims travelled to Santiago along many roads, but the most famous was the Camino Francés, the “French Way”. It crossed the Pyrenees at Roncesvalles or the Somport pass and ran west through Pamplona, Burgos and León.

The Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century manuscript kept in the cathedral, contains a pilgrims’ guide in its fifth book. It describes four main routes through France, starting from Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy and Arles, which joined in northern Spain. The guide lists shrines to visit on the way, warns about dangerous rivers and dishonest toll-keepers, and comments, often unkindly, on the local people.

Kings and churchmen supported the routes with bridges, roads and hospices. Monasteries, including those linked to the great Burgundian abbey of Cluny, offered shelter. Military orders such as the Order of Santiago, founded in 1170, protected travellers. New towns grew up along the road, settled partly by French merchants and craftsmen.

Life on the road

Pilgrims set out for many reasons: devotion, a vow, the hope of healing, or a penance imposed by a priest or court. They carried a staff and a pouch, and they took home a scallop shell from the Galician coast as proof that they had arrived. The shell became the emblem of St James.

The journey was long and risky. A walker from northern France might spend several months on the road, facing illness, bad weather and bandits. Holy Years, when the feast of St James on 25 July falls on a Sunday, offered special indulgences; tradition says their privileges were confirmed by Pope Alexander III in 1179, though the authenticity of that papal bull is doubted by many historians.

How many people made the journey is unknown. Medieval sources give no reliable figures, and modern estimates vary so widely that they are best treated as guesses. What is clear is that pilgrims came from France, England, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and beyond.

Many pilgrims wrote of reaching the cathedral after weeks of travel and spending the night in vigil near the altar. Others left graffiti, gifts and votive offerings, and some never returned home, dying on the way and being buried in hospital cemeteries along the road.

Key people

Diego Peláez was the bishop who began the Romanesque cathedral in 1075. He was later deposed after a dispute with the king.

Diego Gelmírez (c. 1068-1140) drove the building programme, gained archbishop status for Santiago in 1120, and commissioned the Historia Compostellana, a chronicle of his own deeds.

Master Mateo led the workshop that created the Pórtico da Gloria in the late twelfth century and is one of the few named sculptors of the period.

Later history and legacy

The cathedral kept growing after the Middle Ages. The Baroque western facade known as the Obradoiro, by Fernando de Casas Novoa, was built between 1738 and 1750 and now hides the Romanesque front behind it. Inside, the Botafumeiro, a giant censer swung through the transept, continues a medieval practice; the present one dates from 1851.

Pilgrimage declined after the Reformation and the wars of the early modern era, but revived strongly in the late twentieth century. The Old Town of Santiago became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, and the routes in Spain were listed in 1993, followed by the French routes in 1998. In recent years the Pilgrims’ Office has registered more than 400,000 pilgrims a year.

Like the shrine of Thomas Becket that drew the travellers of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Santiago shows how pilgrimage shaped medieval economies, art and roads. Its Romanesque design can be compared with English churches of the same age, such as Durham Cathedral.

Timeline

• c. 820s-830s: A tomb identified as that of St James is reported near Iria Flavia.
• 899: A larger church built by Alfonso III of Asturias is consecrated.
• 997: Al-Mansur sacks Santiago but leaves the tomb intact.
• 1075: Work begins on the Romanesque cathedral under Bishop Diego Peláez.
• 1120: Santiago is raised to an archbishopric under Diego Gelmírez.
• c. 1140s-1170s: The Codex Calixtinus, with its pilgrims’ guide, is compiled.
• 1188: The lintels of Master Mateo’s Pórtico da Gloria are put in place.
• 1211: The cathedral is consecrated in the presence of Alfonso IX of León.
• 1738-1750: The Baroque Obradoiro facade is built.
• 1985: The Old Town of Santiago is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is one of the finest Romanesque buildings in Europe and the end point of one of the world’s most famous pilgrim routes. In the Middle Ages it linked Christian Spain, emerging from the conflicts that also produced the capture of Toledo, with France and the wider Latin Church. Today the same roads attract walkers of every faith and none.